The Chelsea Girls, page 1
ALSO BY FIONA DAVIS
The Dollhouse
The Address
The Masterpiece
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Copyright © 2019 by Fiona Davis
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Davis, Fiona, 1966– author.
Title: The Chelsea girls : a novel / Fiona Davis.
Description: First edition. | New York : Dutton, [2019]
Identifiers: LCCN 2019002424 (print) | LCCN 2019009375 (ebook) | ISBN 9781524744595 (ebook) | ISBN 9781524744588 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Blacklisting of entertainers—Fiction. | Chelsea Hotel—Fiction. | United States—Politics and government—1945–1989—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Historical. | FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General. | FICTION / Literary. | GSAFD: Historical fiction
Classification: LCC PS3604.A95695 (ebook) | LCC PS3604.A95695 C48 2019 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019002424
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For the artists whose dreams were lost
CONTENTS
Also by Fiona Davis
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Act OneChapter One: Hazel
Chapter Two: Hazel
Chapter Three: Maxine
Chapter Four: Hazel
Act TwoChapter Five: Hazel
Chapter Six: Hazel
Chapter Seven: Maxine
Chapter Eight: Hazel
Chapter Nine: Hazel
Chapter Ten: Maxine
Chapter Eleven: Hazel
Chapter Twelve: Hazel
Chapter Thirteen: Maxine
Chapter Fourteen: Hazel
Chapter Fifteen: Maxine
Chapter Sixteen: Hazel
Chapter Seventeen: Hazel
Chapter Eighteen: Maxine
Chapter Nineteen: Hazel
Chapter Twenty: Maxine
Chapter Twenty-one: Hazel
Chapter Twenty-two: Maxine
Chapter Twenty-three: Hazel
Act ThreeChapter Twenty-four: Hazel
Chapter Twenty-five: Hazel
Chapter Twenty-six: Hazel
Chapter Twenty-seven: Maxine
Chapter Twenty-eight: Hazel
Chapter Twenty-nine: Hazel
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
PROLOGUE
New York City, March 1967
In the dead of night, during the dreary month of March, the Chelsea Hotel is a quiet place. The only sound that cuts through the silence is the squeal of a police siren, and that fades fast. Thick walls keep out the everyday noises of one’s neighbors: the muffled swears after walking into a bedpost with a bare foot, or the generous moans of lovemaking. The ghosts of the Chelsea hide in the cement-filled brick walls during the day, and glide out during the violet hours to keep watch. Over time, their number has accumulated, from the refined gentlewoman who left behind four diamond rings, to the puffy Welsh poet sinking from alcoholic stupor to coma. The musicians chant quietly with vaporous breath as the former owner hovers mutely by, wringing his hands with worry.
One more to come, very soon. If the woman had more courage, she might jump from the roof. That would be the faster method, instead of this slow slide into oblivion, where every so often a futile panic makes her want to call out, cry for help. But no one would hear, not here. The ghosts jeer at her and point, but she knows they’ll eventually welcome her into the fold. And once she’s gone, she, too, will keep watch over the residents, including her one true friend, who will sigh into her pillow as the apparition leans in close for an invisible kiss.
ACT ONE
CHAPTER ONE
Hazel
Naples, Italy, April 1945
She hated Maxine Mead, and Italy, on first sight.
When Hazel had first auditioned for the USO tour, back in New York, she’d imagined arriving abroad and gingerly stepping off a plane to a cheering group of GIs. The stage would be a grand opera house or something similarly picturesque, like what she’d seen in the newsreels of Marlene Dietrich and Bob Hope entertaining the troops. Hazel would be sure to call them men, not boys, as the USO Actors’ Handbook advised. After all, many of them had been fighting for four years now. They deserved respect as well as some wholesome entertainment, a respite from the fighting.
Upon boarding the Air Corps plane at LaGuardia Airport, Hazel was informed that she’d be replacing a member of an all-female acting troupe who’d come down with jaundice. Not until the noisy tin can of a cargo plane was aloft was she told her destination: Naples, Italy.
After a bumpy landing, Hazel lugged her two suitcases off the plane and stood on the tarmac, exhausted and confused, waiting for someone to tell her where to go, what to do next. The stifling heat was made worse by the fact that she’d been given the winter uniform, including wool stockings and thick winter panties. Every inch of her from the waist down itched as though she had ants crawling up her sweaty legs. Her uniform—a greenish-gray skirt, white blouse, long black tie, and garrison cap that she’d admired in the mirror back in New York—was now a stinking, wrinkled mess.
Finally, a soldier pulled up in a Jeep and called out her name. He tossed her suitcases in the back before helping her into the passenger seat.
They lurched off over a road battered by potholes, passing demolished apartment buildings and churches. Several women picked through a pile of garbage by the side of the road, stopping to stare at Hazel with dead eyes before turning back to their work. A group of ragged, emaciated children, one of whom sucked on his dirty fingers, watched the scavengers. Yet across the street, a tidy line of schoolboys walked past the desolation as if nothing were wrong. The air smelled of rotting vegetables; dust kicked into Hazel’s nose and made her sneeze. Early in the war, the newspapers had published aerial photos of the city that showed almost all of it up in smoke, annihilated by relentless bombing. While many of the inhabitants sought safety deep underground in the ancient Roman aqueducts and tunnels, at least twenty thousand people had been killed.
She tried to envision what it would be like if New York had been similarly decimated, she and her mother out with their shopping bags, stepping over chunks of concrete, going about their day. She couldn’t imagine it. “This is terrible. There’s hardly anything left,” she said.
The driver shrugged. “Naples was the most bombed site in Italy.”
“The residents rose up and resisted the Germans, right?” She tried to remember what she’d read in the papers. “Looks like they paid dearly for it.”
“Sure did.” He made a sharp left, off the main road. “They told me to take you directly to the stage.”
She would have thought they’d give her a moment or two to freshen up after her interminable trip. “Is the acting company rehearsing?”
“Nope. It’s a show.” He nodded at the men trudging along the side of the road in the same direction, smoking cigarettes. “This is your audience.” At the sound of a low rumble above them, every helmeted head snapped up, scouring the skies. But it was only thunder, from a slate-colored cloud to the west, far out over the sea. The helmets snapped back down.
A show. Good. She’d have a chance to watch the other actors. In New York, she’d been given the script for Blithe Spirit, which had been a big hit on Broadway four years earlier, along with instructions to learn the maid’s role, and she had managed to memorize some of the lines during the flight.
The lines were the easy part for Hazel, as she’d been a serial understudy for the past few years. Hazel’s hope, when she first auditioned for the USO, was to be able to break out of her understudy rut and finally act onstage in a real performance. This was her chance to try something new, so that when she returned to New York, she’d be taken seriously as a major actress, not just a backup to be called upon when the leading lady got the flu. Which, with Hazel’s bad luck, had never happened. She’d even established a reputation among producers: Hiring Hazel Ripley as an understudy guaranteed that your leading lady would never miss a show. Twenty plays now under her belt, without going on even once.
Every night, she
Her mother, Ruth, thought that joining the USO tour was a terrible idea, listing off the names of entertainers who had been injured or killed while abroad, usually in plane crashes. “And let’s not forget that pretty Jane Froman, who almost lost both legs when her plane crashed into a river in Portugal,” Ruth had said. “Accidents happen all the time. You know that’s true.”
Hazel had changed the subject fast, recognizing the dangerous quiver in Ruth’s voice. But she remained undeterred. The opportunity to get onstage while supporting her country was too good to pass up, and she viewed it as a way to honor her brother’s memory while, at the same time, stepping out of his shadow. Not to mention the pay was ten dollars a day plus meals. She’d filled out a long questionnaire, had her fingerprints taken, and gotten inoculated for diseases she’d never even heard of. And now, finally, she’d arrived.
The Jeep pulled into an enormous field, where Mount Vesuvius could be seen smoking away in the distance. Soldiers had taken seats on long benches facing a truck. One side of the truck bed was folded down to expose a platform furnished with a small table and four chairs; a drab-olive canopy was strung overhead. A flag hung from one side, with the words USO CAMP SHOWS written in blue on a white background. This was the stage, although it couldn’t be more than fifteen feet wide. A few hundred soldiers milled about, chatting and smoking cigarettes, with hundreds more still making their way across the field.
“Over there.” The driver pointed behind the truck, where a large tent had been erected. “That’s where the performers are.” He helped her out and handed her the two suitcases. One held the remaining dastardly uniform and other sundries, while the other was full of her best dresses. The Actors’ Handbook had listed a series of dos and don’ts: For the stage, bring dresses that you’d wear on an important Saturday night date. Travel as a unit at all times. If you behave properly, you’ll increase your chance of making the better tours and improve your living and feeding conditions. Made them sound like livestock, that last one.
“I’d walk you in, but we’re not allowed inside.” The driver’s neck turned red at the very idea. “Good luck.”
“No! Don’t say that.”
The soldier’s eyebrows knitted together with concern. “What?”
“You’re supposed to say, ‘Break a leg.’”
He broke out in a wide smile. “Right. Break a leg.”
Hazel nodded goodbye and slid through the opening in the tent flap backward, awkwardly maneuvering her suitcases inside.
“Well, it’s about time.”
Hazel blinked, her eyes adjusting to the dark interior.
A woman around her age, with hair the color of fire, did a slow turn, the better to show off a curvy figure that oozed out of a green silk dress. Behind her, three women perched on low stools in front of a splintered mirror, applying the final touches of stage makeup.
The redhead’s lip curled. “Hazel Ripley, where the hell have you been?”
At least she knew she was in the right place. “I came straight from the plane.” She shrugged, lifting the suitcases a couple of inches to prove it.
“Get out of that and into something pretty. They just called ten.”
“I’m sorry?”
“They just called ten minutes. That means it’s ten minutes until showtime.” The redhead took a dramatic pause. “Have you ever even acted before? I swear, Jaundiced Jenny is out, and in her place we get Hayseed Hazel.”
The other women giggled.
Hazel stood tall. “I’ve acted before. I know what it means. But I can’t go on.”
“Why not?”
This must be some kind of joke they played on all the newbies. “Because I haven’t rehearsed and don’t know any of the blocking.” She put down her suitcases and brushed the dust off her skirt, realizing as she did so that it made her seem like a prissy schoolmarm. She let her arms fall to her sides.
“You’re the maid. How hard can it be? Do you know your lines?”
“I studied them on the plane.”
“Then you’ll be fine. Just enter and exit when you’re supposed to.”
A voice came from outside the tent. “Miss Mead!”
“Yes?” the redhead called back.
“Someone to see you.”
She looked at her watch. “Hayseed, get some makeup on and get out of that uniform. See you ladies in the wings.”
Hazel waited a beat. Surely these women would all burst into laughter, now that the joke had been played out, but they just turned back to the mirror.
The redhead seemed familiar. Maybe Hazel had seen her in a show or at an audition back in New York. “Who is that?” she asked.
“That’s Maxine Mead. Our fearless leader.” The speaker, a tall brunette fitted out in a lemon-yellow dress, stood and shook Hazel’s hand, introducing herself in a deep alto as Verna.
“Do we have a leader?” Hazel was still waiting for an acknowledgment of the prank. “I thought we were all second lieutenants.”
“Maxine runs the show.” Verna shrugged and introduced the other two ladies. Phyllis was a rotund milkmaid type with rosy cheeks, and Betty-Lou was a tiny slip of a girl, perfect for playing kids’ parts, most likely.
“She’s joking, right? About me going on?”
Verna shook her head. “No. We’ve been holding the curtain, waiting for you. You can get ready over there.”
But this was ridiculous. No rehearsal at all? Hazel didn’t even know which actress was playing which character. A lump lodged in her throat at the thought of all those men out there, waiting for the entertainment to begin. This had been a terrible idea. She’d be put on the next plane home, back to doing crosswords in the understudies’ dressing room.
Trembling, Hazel changed into one of her plainer dresses, as befitting a maid, and tied the apron Verna tossed over around her waist. She turned away so the other girls wouldn’t see her hands shaking as she looped the ends into a bow.
After standing in the wings for countless shows, watching others perform, this would be the first time she’d actually step onto the stage? Before thousands of people, with no rehearsal? She yanked the script out of her bag and leafed through the first scene, trying to imprint the cues in her head. The words swam around on the page as her heart pounded in her rib cage.
Another loud clap of thunder. “Will they cancel it if it rains?”
“You kidding?” said Phyllis. “Some of these men walked miles to get here. They ain’t going anywhere.”
Hazel followed the other girls behind the big truck. The rain was holding off, but probably not for long, judging from the soggy feel in the air. Hazel longed for a bolt of lightning to hit the truck and cancel the show. Anything to not have to go onstage in front of this sea of men, in a strange country, when she hadn’t eaten or slept in what felt like a week.
She waited in the wings, which was really a small set of stairs that led onstage, forcing back tears. Betty-Lou handed her a tarnished silver tray. “Here’s your prop.” Hazel couldn’t even whisper anything back—by then, her throat had closed up. She’d wanted desperately to act in a play, but not like this.
Even worse, her character had the first entrance.
The lights went up.
She couldn’t go out there. Into the spotlight.
“What are you waiting for?” A solid shove from Maxine, who’d silently reappeared, propelled her up the stairs. Hazel placed the tray on a table downstage as Verna entered from the other side. Hazel had no idea what Verna said, her mind had fuzzed over, but she answered with “Yes’m,” her first line. She managed to utter the next few, hoping she got them in the right order, before scampering like a dog with its tail between its legs back to the safety of the wings.
